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16 SOUTHERN SENIOR MAGAZINE | Fall 2020 Fred Henley played halfback on the 1943 Picayune football team that won the state championship under first year head coach Jack Nix. The team captured the title with a 13-7 victory over Philadelphia in a game played at Meridian. There were some very interesting occurrences around this stretch of a few days that were the beginning of many life events that would affect young Hen- ley’s life forever. According to Henley, the game was a game that he almost didn’t get to play. In the end, it was an epic example of how people in Picayune would do whatever was needed for the good of their fellow citizens, especially students and ath- letes. “The school had one bus we used whenever we had to go out of town to play games. When it leaked out that we were going to ride that bus all the way to Meridian, the L.O. Crosby family leased a train for the football team and their families, the Picayune marching band, and any citizens who wanted to go,” Henley shared with a smile. A little over a month earlier, Fred Henley turned 18 years old on October 7, 1943, and his best friend Bill Stuart did so the next day. They were drafted into the Marines and were sup- posed to report for duty at about the same time the football season was scheduled to end. When the state champi- onship came along, Henley and Stuart were allowed to stay with the team and play the game even though their depar- ture date with the Marines had come. “I don’t know how they did it or who did it, but somebody in town got together with the draft board and asked them to please let us stay long enough to play that game,“ Henley said. Henley recalled another game played during his senior sea- son when they traveled to play Jackson Central High, at the time, the only high school in the city of the state capitol. Henley said the opponent dressed over one hundred players while Picayune had just twenty-six. “The stands were half full of military personnel, and when we took the field, they laughed at us. After the game, which we won, the military people were the first to congratulate us,” Henley stated with a big grin across his face. Two days after the championship game (on Sunday), Henley and his best friend and teammate Bill Stuart boarded an- other train, this time in New Orleans, LA, on their way to San Diego, CA, for basic training with the United States Marine Corps. Once Henley and Stuart finished boot camp in San Diego, as a part of standard procedure, they were asked by an officer at the base about what role they wanted to serve in the Marines. Henley chose sea school, and Stuart ended up in the infantry. Years later, both Henley and Stuart were in the battle of Iwo Jima. “I was on the USS Intrepid (aircraft carrier), and we were sending up air strikes. I knew that Bill was in the 5 th Marine Division, and I also knew that was the division that occupied the island.” Stuart lost his life on Iwo Jima on March 7, 1945. Henley never knew any details of how his friend died until many years later. One of the other soldiers that went through boot camp with Henley and Stuart, stopped by Picayune one day while traveling by Picayune. He looked in the phone book, contacted Henley, and after verifying he was the same Fred Henley, said he wanted to come by and see him to share some very important information. The preacher, who was from the northern Delta region of By Carey Meitzler G.M. of Pearl River Communications, Inc. Fred Henley: A Life of Service